Tools

"... Classic IR (information retrieval) is inherently predicated on users searching for information, the socalled "information need". But the need behind a web search is often not informational -- it might be navigational (give me the url of the site I want to reach) or transactional (show me s ..."

Classic IR (information retrieval) is inherently predicated on users searching for information, the socalled &quot;information need&quot;. But the need behind a web search is often not informational -- it might be navigational (give me the url of the site I want to reach) or transactional (show me sites where I can perform a certain transaction, e.g. shop, download a file, or find a map). We explore this taxonomy of web searches and discuss how global search engines evolved to deal with web-specific needs.

"... We report on users ’ revisitation patterns to World Wide Web (web) pages, and use the results to lay an empirical foundation for the design of history mechanisms in web browsers. Through history, a user can return quickly to a previously visited page, possibly reducing the cognitive and physical ove ..."

We report on users ’ revisitation patterns to World Wide Web (web) pages, and use the results to lay an empirical foundation for the design of history mechanisms in web browsers. Through history, a user can return quickly to a previously visited page, possibly reducing the cognitive and physical overhead required to navigate to it from scratch. We analysed 6 weeks of detailed usage data collected from 23 users of a wellknown web browser. We found that 58 % of an individual’s pages are revisits, and that users continually add new web pages into their repertoire of visited pages. People tend to revisit pages just visited, access only a few pages frequently, browse in very small clusters of related pages and generate only short sequences of repeated URL paths. We compared different history mechanisms, and found that the stack-based prediction method prevalent in commercial browsers is inferior to the simpler approach of showing the last few recently visited URLs with duplicates removed. Other predictive approaches fare even better. Based on empirical evidence, eight design guidelines for web browser history mechanisms were then formulated. When used to evaluate the existing hypertext-based history mechanisms, they explain why some aspects of today’s browsers seem to work well, and other’s poorly. The guidelines also indicate how history mechanisms in the web can be made even more effective. † � 1997 Academic Press Limited 1.

"... We report on users ’ revisitation patterns to World Wide Web pages, and use these to lay an empirical foundation for the design of history mechanisms in web browsers. Through history, a user can return quickly to a previously visited page, possibly reducing the cognitive and physical overhead requir ..."

We report on users ’ revisitation patterns to World Wide Web pages, and use these to lay an empirical foundation for the design of history mechanisms in web browsers. Through history, a user can return quickly to a previously visited page, possibly reducing the cognitive and physical overhead required to navigate to it from scratch. We analyzed 6 weeks of usage data collected from 23 users of a commercial browser. We found that 58?10of an individual’s pages are revisits, and that users continually add new web pages into their repertoire of visited pages. People tend to revisit pages just visited, access only a few pages frequently, browse in very small clusters of related pages, and generate only short sequences of repeated URL paths. We compared different history mechanisms, and found that the stack-based prediction method prevalent in commercial browsers is inferior to the simpler approach of showing the last few recently visited URLS with duplicates removed. Other predictive approaches fare even better. Our results suggest new approaches to managing history in browsers.

"... Search engine researchers typically depict search as the solitary activity of an individual searcher. In contrast, results from our critical-incident survey of 150 users on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service suggest that social interactions play an important role throughout the search process. Our mai ..."

Search engine researchers typically depict search as the solitary activity of an individual searcher. In contrast, results from our critical-incident survey of 150 users on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service suggest that social interactions play an important role throughout the search process. Our main contribution is that we have integrated models from previous work in sensemaking and information seeking behavior to present a canonical social model of user activities before, during, and after search, suggesting where in the search process even implicitly shared information may be valuable to individual searchers. Author Keywords Social search, social navigation, information seeking,

"... Current commercial web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer provide a wide and diverse range of utilities, such as history lists and bookmarks, that support revisiting previously seen pages on the web. Yet previous research indicates that these utilities are largely un ..."

Current commercial web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer provide a wide and diverse range of utilities, such as history lists and bookmarks, that support revisiting previously seen pages on the web. Yet previous research indicates that these utilities are largely unused. In this paper, we present an alternative utility called WebView; a prototype designed to improve the efficiency and usability of page revisitation. It does this by paying particular attention to how previous pages are represented visually, and by integrating many revisitation capabilities into a single display space. Our preliminary evaluation of WebView indicates that users are enthusiastic about the functionality provided, and that it improves the efficiency of some navigational acts.

by
Saul Greenberg, Andy Cockburn
- PROCEEDINGS OF THE 5TH ANNUAL HUMAN FACTORS AND THE WEB CONFERENCE, HELD AT NIST, 1999

"... This paper concerns the ubiquitous Back button found in most Web browsers. First, we outline why Back is an effective method for revisiting WWW pages: a) It allows rapid return to very recently visited pages, which comprises the majority of pages a person wishes to return to; b) People can use it ev ..."

This paper concerns the ubiquitous Back button found in most Web browsers. First, we outline why Back is an effective method for revisiting WWW pages: a) It allows rapid return to very recently visited pages, which comprises the majority of pages a person wishes to return to; b) People can use it even with a nave model of the way it works; c) People usually keep it on permanent display because it is visually compact; and d) Back works via a simple `click until the desired page is recognized&apos; strategy. Second, we investigate the behavior of Back. The typical stack-based behavior underlying Back is problematic because some previously seen pages are not reachable through it. To get around this problem, we offer several alternate behaviors of the Back button, all based upon a recency model. The advantage of recency is that all previously seen pages are now available via Back. Because trade-offs exist, we present both problems and prospects of these different Back behaviors in various navig...

by
Paul P. Maglio, Rob Barrett
- In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on User Modeling, 1997

"... Abstract. In this paper, we sketch a model of what people do when they search for information on the web. From a theoretical perspective, our interest lies in the cognitive processes and internal representations that are both used in and affected by the search for information. From a practical persp ..."

Abstract. In this paper, we sketch a model of what people do when they search for information on the web. From a theoretical perspective, our interest lies in the cognitive processes and internal representations that are both used in and affected by the search for information. From a practical perspective, our aim is to provide personal support for informationsearching and to effectively transfer knowledge gained by one person to another. Toward these ends, we first collected behavioral data from people searching for information on the web; we next analyzed these data to learn what the searchers were doing and thinking; and we then constructed specific web agents to support searching behaviors we identified. 1

"... This paper describes a generic approach to structuring and visualising a hypertext-based information space on the WWW. This approach, called Generalised Similarity Analysis (GSA), provides a unifying framework for extracting structural patterns from a range of proximity data concerning three fundame ..."

This paper describes a generic approach to structuring and visualising a hypertext-based information space on the WWW. This approach, called Generalised Similarity Analysis (GSA), provides a unifying framework for extracting structural patterns from a range of proximity data concerning three fundamental relationships in hypertext, namely, hypertext linkage, content similarity and browsing patterns. GSA emphasizes the integral role of users&apos; interests in dynamically structuring the underlying information space. Pathfinder networks are used as a natural vehicle for structuring and visualising the rich structure of an information space by highlighting salient relationships in proximity data. In this paper, we use the GSA framework in the study of hypertext documents automatically retrieved over the Internet, including a number of departmental WWW sites and conference proceedings on the WWW. We show that GSA has several distinct features for structuring and visualising hyp...